Play caught up with Freestyle Games' Chris Lee to chat about the latest title in the ever-expanding Hero family, DJ Hero… Play: Could you tell us a little about Freestyle Games and how you ended up creating DJ Hero? Chris Lee: We’ve always been focused on music videogames. We developed a game called B-Boy, which was very much in the hip-hop music vein. We learned a lot from that previous experience and from working with Guitar Hero. We wanted to create something that blew out from just specific genres and opened up a whole remit of possibilities. And really the deejay was the one guy who could pick any record, any music, from an era, any part of the world and was completely unlimited. So that was really attractive for us, to almost use this an excuse to play all the music we really like.

Play spoke to Bizarre Creations' Ben Ward and Peter McCabe about their first project under Activision ownership, Blur. It's like Project Gotham meets Mario Kart. This isn't the whole interview. If you want the best bits, you'll have to get the next issue of Play, which is on sale on 9 July. Play: Has the development of Blur been influenced by other racing games with power-ups in them? Ben Ward: Not an influence so much, but we’ve played all of them. We’ve looked at every game quite recently. But I don’t think that Bizarre works in that way that there’s direct influences. We’d never take one big portion of a game and chuck it into our game. It’s more like we say, “Well, Mario Kart has power-ups. But why have they got that? And why does it work? And why is it interesting? And what are the bad bits about it? How can we take all those good and bad things and address them in a different way in our game? Do we need to address them?”

…along with its Lust, Gluttony, Wrath and the other five circles of Hell you'll play through in EA Redwood Shores' Dante's Inferno. Play spoke to the game's producer, Jonathan Knight, about how happy he is to be going through Hell at work. Play: Dead Space was the biggest ‘dark horse’ of last year. Is EA Redwood Shores hoping for a similar reception for Dante’s Inferno? Jonathan Knight: I certainly would be pleased as punch with the kind of critical reception that Dead Space has gotten. Obviously, it’s an extremely high quality game, and everyone hopes for just one of those in their career. In some ways this is the next game from that studio, and in some ways we’ve got a bit of a tougher hill to climb now because expectations have been set with Dead Space. But I’m pretty confident that we’re gonna nail it. Although we try not to get too focussed on what’s going to happen when it comes out because there’s a long time between now and then, so we just obviously want it to be really good. We’re very, very aware that people pay a lot of money for these games and that expectations are high, as they should be. So we’re gonna try to knock it outta the park.

This month’s Play has an exclusive interview with Tony Iuppa, producer on 256-player online extravaganza, MAG (a.k.a. Massive Action Game). As usual, we’ve not been able to cram every detail into the pages of the magazine, so here’s some extra bits. For the best bits, you’ll have to pick up the mag. The magazine, that is…

The current issue of Play features an interview with BioWare CEO Dr Ray Muzyka, in which he talks about Mass Effect, Dragon Age and how much he loves the PS3. We couldn't fit it all into the mag, so here are some 'extras'… Play: How are you finding it being part of EA? How has the acquisition changed BioWare? Ray: We’ve evolved every year we’ve been in business and I think we’re at a good place. It’s great to be part of a large stable company. Another ...

In Play issue 176, on-sale 19 February 2009, we go in-depth with one of the PS3's most significant releases of 2009, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. As part of the feature, we chatted to various members of Naughty Dog but, due to time constraints, we had to cut an interview with Bruce Straley, Game Director of Uncharted 2. Still, here's a big dollop of it for your pleasure. Enjoy! You’ve opted to make Uncharted a series – what caused this? Were you all still yearning to explore this world once you’d finished the first game? The sun has not yet set on Nathan Drake, that’s for certain. We’ve just started to get to know him in Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and we wanted to learn more about who he is. Boy do we ever – in Uncharted 2, Drake has fallen back into his old ways and again is operating out in the fringes, one rife with mercenary treasure-seekers and thieves.

Issue #174 of Play (on sale December 24 – get it for Christmas) features an awesome interview with Rock Band 2 lead designer Dan Teasdale, in which he tells us about how Rock Band 2 expands Harmonix’ vision to provide a new kind of music platform. But he talked to us about all kinds of other stuff that we didn’t have room for in the magazine, so here it is on the blog… Play: How did Harmonix start out? Was it always a videogame developer? DT: We started in the mid-Nineties. We were founded by Alex, our CEO, and Eran, our CTO. When they started they weren’t actually a games company, they were a music company, and a lot of the first things they did weren’t games, although we made a game called The Axe, which sold tens of copies, and was about using a joystick or a mouse to make music. It wasn’t really until Parappa The Rapper came out that it clicked that we could use games as a way for people to experience music. That was the catalyst for Amplitude, and all of the games we’ve made since then.

Last week, we invaded Media Molecule's Guildford-based office for an extensive chat with two of the studio's key figures – creative director Mark Healey and technical director David Smith. Next month, we're doing a huge Making Of LittleBigPlanet feature, but here's a sample of the Healey interview to pass the time… When it came to creating levels for LittleBigPlanet, how conscious were you of the whole user-creation aspect? We knew that the ‘create’ aspect of LittleBigPlanet would be a huge part of the experience, so ...

Some would say that the Lego franchise has already reached the ceiling. How did you go about changing the established formula? For us as a developer it’s incredibly important that we ensure no one could accuse us of simply re-skinning the LEGO Star Wars game with ‘another major movie license’. We make every effort to ensure that within the gameplay experience we’re capturing the essence, in a LEGO form, of the character that we’re creating the game around. There are elements that work really ...

Play talked to two of TNA Wrestling's biggest stars, Samoa Joe and A.J. Styles about their involvement in the first game from the TNA stable, TNA iMPACT!. For more from Joe and A.J., and for our hands-on preview of the game, check out the next issue of Play, on sale 7 August… Play: Is there a real culture of gaming within the TNA organisation? Joe: For the most part TNA’s real fortunate because we have a lot of gamers that play regularly. We have weekly online gaming ...

In the next issue of Play (#168, on sale July 10) we've got an exclusive interview with Owen O' Brien, in which the senior producer of Mirror's Edge talks about what to expect from DICE's "first-person movement" game beyond a really cool looking main character and lots of running about. By way of a taster, here's a chunk of that interview that we didn't have space for in the mag… Play: What sorts of problems did you run into building a first-person game with such a ...

Can you tell us how Dark Void came to fruition, and what role Capcom played in the concept of the game? Well Capcom agreed to fund us to build a small prototype, so we packed in a bunch of stuff (on-ground combat vehicle combat, air combat, and all this stuff). We got it done, barely, but it wasn’t perfect. A lot of games you look at and you think “there’s nothing wrong with this, but there’s nothing special about it.” So we took it to Capcom ...

Play took time out of its busy day for a chat with Ready at Dawn’s Nathan Phail-Liff. We laughed, we loved, but mostly we talked about Chains Of Olympus GOW is huge. How has Ready at Dawn stamped its mark on the franchise? It was difficult just to match the quality of previous games. So right away we looked at what Santa Monica Studios did well and we wanted to honour that. If anything, we’re just proud that it ...